By the mid 1970s, Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation series were largely off the air. A few ITV regions kept up random repeat runs of the colour series, but they were few and far between. One of the only stations keeping the flag flying was ATV who had, of course, financed the series in the first place. A few years earlier, the midlands operator had faced criticism for the sheer volume of Supermarionation shows that were to be found in its children's programme schedule, but all this meant in practice was that, during 1968, the only Gerry Anderson productions broadcast on ATV were first run episodes of Captain Scarlet and Joe 90. Stingray had, in all honesty, been played to death, having been on an almost continuous loop of repeats since 1964. By 1967, even I was getting fed up with seeing it.
Colour television provided a ready made excuse to dust off and repeat older colour series that had formerly been seen only in black and white, and the years from 1969 through to around 1973 provided an ‘Indian summer’ of ITC material getting its first outing in colour.
Beginning in December 1969, ATV began an early evening repeat of Stingray, which ran all the way through to September – the last time the series would be shown in a single, unbroken run by the midlands operator. Viewers with colour sets could, for the first time, see Troy Tempest and Marina as they were meant to be seen, and no doubt marvelled at the episodes’ rich colour palette. In our house, we were still watching in black and white. In fact, I doubt if I was even aware at this time that Stingray had been made in colour, so I didn’t feel we were missing out.
The show was then off air in the midlands for nearly three years; and when it returned, on 24 July 1973, it was in a new morning timeslot. 1973 was the first year in which ITV showed children's programmes and films during the school summer holidays, which now became a prime time to see Stingray, and the run of episodes continued through to the end of the summer break. There were more at Christmas, followed by a further run through the summer of 1974, by which time another near complete run of episodes was drawing to a close (the few remaining ‘orphaned’ episodes were stripped into editions of Tiswas during 1975).
In 1976, yet another repeat run began, marking the sixth outing for the series on ATV since its debut in October 1964. As ever, the repeats had an annoying tendency to begin a few weeks ahead of the school summer holiday, and this year the summer morning schedule began on the week commencing Monday 28 June. The TV Times didn’t give a title, but it seems reasonable to assume that the episode shown on Thursday 1 July, at 10.35am was the untitled pilot. The original ITV broadcast order was significantly different to the ‘official’ episode order, as seen in all episode guides and subsequent physical media releases, and the second episode was Emergency Marineville (8 July) followed by Ghost Ship (15 July). Our school didn’t break up for the holidays until the following day, so I missed all three of these repeats. We were then on a family holiday in Wales, which meant missing Subterranean Sea on the 22nd. Thus it was that the first episode I got to see in this 1976 repeat run was Loch Ness Monster, on 29 July.
This was only the second episode of Stingray I’d ever seen in colour, so as a fan it felt like a significant moment. It's hardly a typical episode, but it's certainly colourful. The episodes shown over the remainder of the summer holiday were something of a mixed bag, and only An Echo of Danger (19 August) conformed to the standard action adventure formula, while the others were either exotic, whimsical or romantic stories. I’d have much preferred to see episodes like The Big Gun or The Invaders to In Search of the Tajmanon (1 September), but any Stingray was better than nothing. One thing we did notice about this run of episodes was the different openings, some in colour, others in black and white, denoting episodes from the series’ two production blocks. We also committed the soundtracks faithfully to tape – I can still recall listening to a playback of Raptures of the Deep (28 August) and wishing that there was a way to record the picture along with the sound, little knowing that home video lay just around the corner, and that by the time of the next run of repeats we'd be able to do just that.
In Search of the Tajmanon brought the 1976 summer repeats to an end. Barring a solitary episode (Tune of Danger) shown on New Year’s Day 1977, and an unscheduled Stand by For Action on 15 November 1980, this marked the end of the line for Stingray on ATV. In 1977, rather than picking up Stingray again, ATV chose to show episodes of Joe 90 commencing Friday 1 July, in a run which included the decidedly unseasonable Christmas episode The Unorthodox Shepherd (22 July). I wasn’t bothered with Joe 90 and didn’t even bother to watch most weeks. Viewers in Yorkshire were doing rather better, with episodes of Thunderbirds, but elsewhere the ITV network was largely a Supermarionation-free zone.
The 1976 repeats of Stingray made use of somewhat worn and washed-out 16mm copies, occasionally marred with splices and missing scenes. By the time Stingray returned to our screens in 1982, it was in the form of newly struck 35mm prints. Curiously, the battered old 16mm versions were dusted off for a further repeat run in 1987, while the 1990s BBC2 revival was different again, with brand new transfers, replacing the monochrome opening shots with the colour version across the whole series. Both of the 1980s repeat runs had seen the series back in its time honoured summer morning slot, and when BBC2 placed it in their early evening schedule, it felt almost wrong.
For me, Stingray will always belong to summer mornings. All told, between 1973 and 1976 we got to see maybe half the series during those holiday screenings. The repeats of 1976 seem to belong to the whole fabric of that legendarily hot summer. Somehow, it wouldn’t have been quite the same without them.
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